The Com­mon Inter­na­tion­al­ist of the Roja­va pub­lish­es on internationalistcommune.com an open let­ter, call­ing for a sol­i­dar­i­ty with Roja­va. To expand the vis­i­bil­i­ty of this let­ter, we pub­lish it on Kedis­tan, and with sol­i­dar­i­ty, we join to this call. 

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The resistance is not over

Open letter after the #WorldAfrinDay

We, who are working here in Rojava as internationals, are part of the worldwide fight of the opressed against the reign of state, capital and pathriarchy.

șehid Hêlîn Qercox

The #WorldAfrin­Day has been a his­tor­i­cal exam­ple of resis­tance and inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty. Thou­sands took to the streets and stood up against this war, giv­ing their sup­port to the resis­tance and val­ues of this rev­o­lu­tion. Sol­i­dar­i­ty came from more than 50 cities from all around the world, and it proved how impor­tant what is hap­pen­ing here is for peo­ple. New groups and new peo­ple are orga­niz­ing their sol­i­dar­i­ty, get­ting involved and defend the rev­o­lu­tion. From Cana­da to Aus­tralia, from Mex­i­co to Japan, the world has shown that Afrin is not alone.

For two months, the bombs of the Turk­ish army have been falling and killing peo­ple in Afrin. Dur­ing these same two months, there have been world­wide actions against this occu­pa­tion. And they will con­tin­ue. Afrin, as the west­ern can­ton of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Fed­er­a­tion of North­ern Syr­ia, will be defend­ed as the bea­con of hope that it became, as the source of inspi­ra­tion that it is. The bot­tom-up democ­ra­cy, with women at the fore­front build­ing social ecol­o­gy, is what the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem tries to keep locked up, claim­ing that ‘there is no alter­na­tive’, that utopia is not pos­si­ble. But here, we learned that anoth­er world is not only pos­si­ble, but nec­es­sary, and it just depends on how much we believe in it, how deter­mined we are to bring this utopia into existence.

Afrin is now under the occu­pa­tion of the Turk­ish army. After these months of resis­tance, to see the occu­pa­tion forces enter­ing the city may seem like the utopia is going away once again; but no one said the rev­o­lu­tion would come around eas­i­ly. It was some­thing we had only imag­ined before com­ing to Roja­va, and wit­ness­ing with our own eyes what’s going on here. Today, here, we are tak­ing on sev­er­al cen­turies of the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem and nation-state mod­el. We are chal­leng­ing thou­sands of years of patri­ar­chal oppres­sion and male rule pow­er. We are chal­leng­ing the essence of how soci­ety itself is per­ceived and organized.

But today we also need to exam­ine our­selves and assess what we have done. As the inter­na­tion­al­ist com­mune, we did not man­age to devel­op the full poten­tial that inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty can mean for this rev­o­lu­tion. We were not able to fol­low all the ini­tia­tives and actions that peo­ple shared with us, we were not able to give our per­spec­tives and answers to all the ideas and pro­pos­als that were pre­sent­ed to us. We were not able to give the right answer to the attacks that struck us. We were not able to under­stand the real dimen­sions of the rev­o­lu­tion that is going on here and the impor­tance of defend­ing what today is being developed.

But we will reflect on that, and we will learn from our mis­takes. When the next attack of the rul­ing pow­ers strikes once again, we will be wis­er and more expe­ri­enced, and more capa­ble of defend­ing our­selves and the peo­ple around us. We know that this can hap­pen at any time, maybe tomor­row, and we know we can not do it alone. We need to be able to see the threats before they are too big to over­come. We need to have bet­ter and deep­er analy­sis of the sit­u­a­tion we are in. We need all the hope and the inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty that this rev­o­lu­tion is rais­ing in people’s hearts. And that’s why we call on you to come here.

Come and see with your own eyes what is hap­pen­ing here. Come with an open mind and heart, ready to chal­lenge what you believe human­i­ty is able to accom­plish. Come to learn, to sup­port and to orga­nize this rev­o­lu­tion. Come and help us to cre­ate the inter­na­tion­al move­ment that will be able to change the cap­i­tal­ist drift that human­i­ty is suffering.

But if you can’t come, there are still a thou­sand ways you can con­tribute to this resis­tance. We need to think how we can make this rev­o­lu­tion suc­cess­ful, and what can be done in every place to achieve this aim. As inter­na­tion­al­ists, we need to be able to act and inter­act with the soci­ety we are in. We need to learn from the past move­ments and ana­lyze what are the best ways to face oppres­sion. From mass mobi­liza­tion, to civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. From sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tions, to direct actions. Yes­ter­day, we showed the world that togeth­er we are strong. But the sit­u­a­tion in Afrin today showed us that this is not enough. So now, we need to open a glob­al debate about what should be the next step.

– This open let­ter is a call to all the peo­ple and groups who took an active role in the #WorldAfrin­Day, and also to oth­er ini­tia­tives in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Afrin resis­tance. We want to open a pub­lic debate. We will be expect­ing your answers, your ideas, your pro­pos­als. We also call for your sup­port to spread and trans­late this let­ter, you can find our email in our web­site.

Inter­na­tion­al­ist Com­mune of Rojava
25/03/2018

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Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.